Monday, June 26, 2017

Latest Readings From Clive James



Clive James is dying of leukemia, but he is not about to stop reading.  Hence, his 2015 book, Latest Readings (Yale University Press).  The man lives on and the reading continues, and while we’re here, we should express our gratitude for the joie de vivre his work has given us over the years.  He is a literary treasure.

This book, admittedly slim, is really a series of notes and ruminations about reading.  Time passes, and the winged chariot is on its way, so James relocates his home and library to Cambridge where he can read and write until the very end.  His main contact to get his literary fix is Hugh’s bookstall, “known to its devotees both literary and academic as one of the great bookstalls on earth.”  James finds himself buying second copies of books that he either once had in his library and gave away, or that he could not immediately lay his hands on resulting in a need to possess that is every bit as addictive as morphine.  He reads in “no particular order,” plowing through works both serious and trivial.  When it is the end, all pretenses fall.  What do you want next?  Where does your mind take you?  Approaching death is the great liberator to James so he can read willy-nilly to his heart’s contentment.

His essays are intriguing, his writers important to the world:  Hemingway, Conrad, Patrick O’Brien, Anthony Powell, Shakespeare and Johnson.  Some he touches upon and moves on; others, he circles back to in later essays in the book, drawing every nuance and subtlety he can milk from the prose.  And like the good critic and reader he is, James brings us along, relating his readings to life, wisdom, experience.

Hemingway’s style “was a virus,” he writes, a line that still makes me laugh out loud.  “Younger would-be writers took it as the sound of truth, of real experience lived and assimilated.  The facts say that he was at his most persuasive when making things up.”  One can hear the air whistling out of the balloon of ego and reputation.  “He wanted us to admire the bravery with which he rewrote his latest manuscript for the 323rd time.”

His humor is tempered by the seriousness of his quest to read well, and the sunset advancing to twilight.  “The provenance of art can never be as morally elementary as we wish it,” he writes toward the end of the book.  “Art grows from the world…This cruel but consoling fact really shows up when you start the slide to nowhere.  The air is lit by a shimmering tangle of all the reasons you are sad to go and all the reasons you are glad to leave.”

For a reader, the book is short enough to be read in a sitting, and rewarding as such memoirs often are when written by a writer passionate about reading to readers who share the author’s loves.  It is not an earth-shattering book, but it is a necessary and wise one, and we must toast Clive James now before twilight becomes night and he slips away into the darkness that awaits us all.  It is comforting to know that we will still have his books, his life and thought available to us long after he is gone.

Wednesday, June 21, 2017

The Stranger in the Woods



Doesn’t everyone dream of going off for a year or two or thirty to a cabin in the woods?

I guess, then, it’s just me and the Unabomber and good, old Henry David Thoreau.  But when I am tired of the Sturm und Drang and of course, the freeway traffic, the solitary time in the woods seems very inviting.

Journalist Michael Finkel in his book, The Stranger in the Woods:  The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit (Alfred A. Knopf, 2017), profiles a modern hermit, Christopher Knight, who disappeared into the Maine woods for almost thirty years until his recent capture while burglarizing a nearby camp.  It is an extraordinary tale that is riveting and unbelievable.  The area where Knight had his camp near North Pond is not completely isolated; many people have vacation cabins there and during the summer, the place teems with campers and tourists.  Yet, over the course of his time there, Knight had exactly one occasion where he came face to face with another human being.  They greeted each other and went their separate ways.  The hiker out for a day time stroll had no idea he had just encountered a living myth.  People in the area often reported burglaries at their properties, but nothing of much value was ever taken.  Knight would break in to steal food, clothing, batteries, and books.  He would not damage the property, and when he needed to pry open a door or window, he brought tools with him in his kit to make the necessary repairs when he left.  The Pine Tree Camp where Knight was ultimately arrested had been burglarized several times by the hermit who gained entrance using a key he swiped on an earlier visit.

Knight left home for the woods when the meltdown at Chernobyl was in the news.  That is how he determined the span of years he had lived in the forest after he was arrested.  His camp was not far from other cabins, but it was surrounded by large boulders and scrub leaving a clearing in the center where Knight set up his tarp and tent.  Finkel makes several excursions to the place, and the first time he goes, he actually has a lot of trouble finding the site.  It is the perfect place to hide, nearly in plain sight.  From there, Knight would cautiously venture out into the darkness, careful to leave no tracks or traces of his encroachment.  He combines a sort of obsessive compulsive need to come and go like a ghost leaving nothing to betray his camp or person behind to tip off investigators.  Some people, after being burglarized several times, started leaving out food and clothing for him, but he never touched those items.

In the Maine woods, temperatures in winter plummet to sub-zero depths, but Knight survived by staying awake and active during the most frigid parts of the early mornings.  He had no training in survival but existed on luck and the bounty left behind by the summer campers.  It is an incredible story.  Knight was caught only when one particularly resourceful ranger set up an elaborate system of alarms and traps.  Most of the time, Knight was able to frustrate law enforcement and defeat special motion-activated alarms and cameras.  Terry Hughes, the ranger, just got lucky one night.

Of course, Knight never hurt anyone nor did he ever threaten others.  The land he squatted on in his camp was owned by someone, but it was not being used.  He cleaned up any mess and avoided people.  So what, exactly, was his crime?  He was arrested by Hughes and sentenced to prison, but his life after seems sad and confining when Finkel visits him.  It takes the reporter many, many tries to gain the confidence of Knight, who comes off as possibly on the autism spectrum or at the very least, anti-social.  The book is both a story of a modern hermit’s life as well as a profile of an odd man out from society.

Along the way, Finkel discusses the roots of the hermit life and the roles hermits have played in human history.  This is also an interesting facet of the book.  While in the wilds, Knight’s chief form of entertainment was reading.  Finkel writes that “The life inside a book always felt welcoming to Knight.”  Interestingly, this hermit had no empathy for Thoreau, and in fact, Finkel says that Knight had disdain for the 19th century writer.  He also never kept a journal.  The one thing that provoked a strong reaction in Knight was an issue of National Geographic containing a photograph of a young shepherd from Peru.  The boy was standing by the side of a highway crying with the bodies of many of his sheep strewn behind him having just been struck by a car.  “They published a photo of the boy’s humiliation,” says Knight.  “He had failed his family, who had entrusted him with the herd.  It’s disgusting that everybody can see a little boy’s failure.”  There are a few of the moments of illumination of the mind of Christopher Knight.



I found the book fascinating.  It is natural for human beings to crave solitude as well as the company of others.  For some reason, Knight lacked the latter.  When life in civilization became unbearable, he went off into the woods to live the life he imagined.  He simplified his existence, as Thoreau advocated, and for 27 years he lived life on his terms, in his head space.  His parallel universe existed in the Maine woods right alongside the campers and vacationers.  Then, on one fateful night, the hermit’s life ended and he was back in the harsh glare of civilization, and nothing would ever be the same again.

Tuesday, June 13, 2017

In the Heart of the Sea



Two things I want to share here up front:  one, I don’t want to write a negative review ever again.  I want to write about books that thrill me in some way.  If there are negatives or areas where the work falls short, I’ll mention them, but I want to thoroughly enjoy the books I read and write about, and I want to be able to recommend them, even if they have a few shortcomings.

Two, I buy more books than I can possibly read.  I am like a cat chasing a feather.  I read about a certain book or see it reviewed somewhere, and I want to read it.  I make my purchase, add it to the growing stacks around my work area, but before I can read it, I see other books that I want to read and go after them.  So what happens is, when I go looking for something because I think I have it already, or I take the time to dust and reorganize my shelves and stacks, I find books I wanted to read months or even years ago and I realize I forgot I had them.  I place them in a stack near my desk but they are again buried by new acquisitions.

So the books I write about maybe new or maybe old, and in some cases, very old.  I can only guarantee that I enjoyed them enough to write about them, and that if you can find a copy, you might enjoy them too.  If you find them not enjoyable, feel free to comment and share your opinion because I like the discussion.

Seventeen years ago, I bought a book I could not wait to read, only I did wait.  I waited a long time, and I am embarrassed to say, I was flipping around on the television one evening when I happened upon the theatrical movie version of the book directed by Ron Howard and realized I had a copy somewhere in my apartment and began the search for it.  The book is called In the Heart of the Sea:  The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick (Viking Penguin, 2000).  At the time of purchase, I was teaching Melville to high school students and this book purported to be about the true story that inspired Melville to write his greatest novel, Moby Dick.

I have to say I love sea stories from Horatio Hornblower to The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger (Norton, 2009) to Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea.  In fact, although I am not much more than an armchair adventurer, I love the human being against nature tale.  Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer (Anchor Books, 1997) comes to mind as well as the writing of Jack London and also Gary Paulson.

In the Heart of the Sea is a more detailed and developed story as a book over the movie version, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  I could not leave it alone and bombs could have been falling on my couch and I would not have moved.  Philbrick’s writing is solid and serviceable, not artistic, but his story is well researched and accompanied by an extensive bibliography for further reading.  What was most interesting is how the world was such a wild and unexplored place to these early 19th century whalers.  They would set off from Nantucket on the East coast of America and travel down around Cape Horn and up the coast of South America to their hunting grounds.  The journey could take three to five years or more before they could return with a full cargo of whale oil.  But that oil was a valuable commodity until fossil fuels were discovered on land, so the material was critical to civilization at the expense of these beautiful animals.  And of course, one of them, the celebrated white whale, took issue with the ship and crew and exacted a painful and deadly revenge.

The story of how those sailors survived after their good ship was smashed to splinters is gripping and powerful.  They resorted to cannibalism to survive and were in extreme jeopardy when rescued.  Ultimately, eight of the twenty crew members made it back in rigged up battered whaleboats after 95 days stranded at sea.  Two members of the crew, Owen Chase and Thomas Nickerson wrote accounts of the deadly voyage and both Philbrick and Melville used these accounts extensively to fuel their stories.

There is also the matter of environmental destruction.  During the course of their desperate voyage, the sailors burned up an entire island leading to the destruction of several species of birds and tortoises.  In addition, they were hunting an endangered species.  Part of the reason the crew had to journey so far was that the whale population had been depleted by extreme hunting.

The book puts the reader on that fateful voyage and is a great summer read.  It is the kind of adventure story to dive into on those hot nights when sleep is impossible.  Guaranteed, the lost crew of the Essex and their white whale nemesis will haunt your dreams long after you have closed the covers of the book.

Sketch of the whale ship Essex by Thomas Nickerson

Thursday, June 8, 2017

And We're Back...



Something has happened.

I’ve spent the last year researching and writing about how story helps us deal with grief and loss.  It was a subject I’d thought about for a long time, and as I read deeper and deeper into theology, philosophy, history, and story, I found myself adrift on a broad and very deep sea.  What came out of it was a book made up of memoir, narrative theory, God and life—not necessarily in that order, or in any order.  I realized that there was a lot I have not worked through about mid-life, and that if I did not find a path through the dark wood, as Dante did with his Divine Comedy, I would lose myself and be frozen in the mire of middle age.  I’m happy to say I think the darkness has abated and it is summer again.

Some people get hair plugs, a new significant other, a sports car, whatever, to get through the realization that there are more days behind than ahead.  That’s not me.  I want to do meaningful work and I want to make peace with the person I am now, after all the trials and tribulations, the joys and sorrows of my lived experience.

So I have been away for a while, but now I am back.

The way storytelling is a theological response to grief and loss has become a book.  I am finishing my revisions now; all I have to do is find a publisher, which is a big item on the to-do list, but even if it never sees the light of publication, I have worked something out in my mind.  I have learned to grieve for those I’ve lost while not letting the grief stop me in my tracks.  Joan Didion wrote once that “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”  She also told us that “I write to find out what I am thinking,” and actually, I have heard that said by more than one writer I have admired.  I know what I am thinking:  this life is all too brief and yet, we cannot cling to it.  Life is impermanence, pain, challenge, but it is also exhilarating and powerful and inspiring and joyful.

Most of what I’ve learned about this life has come as a result of reading.  I read everything.  I carry books and magazines everywhere with me, often at the expense of nearly walking into traffic or falling into an open manhole.  I have always loved to read, as I have expressed in so many ways on this blog.  It has been my saving grace over the years.  This blog will continue to be a record of my reading life along with the experiences and insights I discover.  I hope to become more insightful by reading wise men and women and then writing about them and their stories as a way to cement the wisdom in my memory.

This blog is about “literature, culture, and the life of the mind.”  I have changed that tagline a few times in the last ten years, once to “questions, comments, true stories of adventure,” which is something I ask my students at the end of a class:  In truth, the words I post here will be all of the above.  Sometimes, study only reveals more questions, but I love the questions.  The world of information we have at our fingertips gives us the answers, but without the questions, we would not know what to look for.  The quest, the search goes on, and when we are gone, others will take our place.  It is all a seamless garment of us, of history, of story, of life.

So I hope you have missed me over the last four months, because I want you to come back and tell me what you have been up to.  If you like something you see here, I’d like to know, and if you disagree, even better.  Let’s dialogue.  The life of the mind is a communal life; our country is going through some difficult times and we need to be thinking and discussing and working toward solutions to the problems that plague us.  We need to listen to each other’s stories; they are imperative to the communal life of which we dream where people can disagree and discuss, but remain respectful and considerate and loving of others.

I have often toyed with the idea of renaming this blog, The Student’s View.  As I reach the milestone of thirty years in the classroom as a teacher, I still, still feel more like a student than a teacher.  I think the best classes over the years have been ones where we are all learning together.  I’ll keep it The Teacher’s View for now; after ten years and 447 posts, it would be weird to change the name.  But know that those who enter into a dialogue often teach me far more than I teach them.  I have had some wonderful student-teachers over the years, and I thoroughly enjoy hearing from them here or on other social media sites.

So sound your barbaric yawp to the sky, as Uncle Walt instructed us, and let us live and live well so that when we are gone, everyone will miss us and only the trees will remember.  I know that we will turn to dust, but our stories will remain.  Let us live forward into the future.  Onward!